Front and Back Covers. Volume 20, Number 6. December 2004

Front and back cover caption, volume 20 issue 6 VICTORIAN LEGACY 'Miss Perkins', a school teacher during the reign of Queen Victoria, introduces this special issue on anthropology and education. She reminds us that the Victorian era gave birth to anthropology: though initially deemed a highly controversial, even sacrilegious, pursuit, it came to be seen as promising hope for the betterment and civilization of humankind in the British Empire. In this issue Paul Sillitoe traces the earliest dissemination of anthropology back to the activities of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in the 1840s and 50s, which eventually formed a separate Section H of Anthropology in 1884. Brian Street, taking a post‐Victorian perspective, suggests that British anthropologists have lost their way with regard to education, and ignore the study of language and ethnography of communication at their peril. Paul Cooper examines how policy‐makers in government and in universities increasingly, but mistakenly, regard education as a consumer service, a commodity which can be bought and sold. Sue Wright highlights the role of education in forming the social subject, and the ways anthropology can both contribute to and analyse this process. Keith Hart argues that academics have been far too elitist about university education and moreover have failed to organize themselves effectively. Despite their own long schooling, many now earn less than school teachers. David Mills looks at what European anthropologists are saying about the Bologna Agreement, which seeks to standardize university courses and qualifications across Europe. In a separate c cccomment, Mills recollects past unfulfilled promises of anthropology's potential in schools, and how it is now anthropologists who are forced to sit in the educationalist's classroom. Miss Perkins, our Victorian teacher for this issue, is played by professional actor Karen Powell, who regularly introduces schoolchildren to the Victorian classroom at the Ragged School Museum, Mile End, London. Modern teachers today no longer enforce discipline through the dunce's cap, the cane or the backboard; the Queen's portrait is unlikely to be found in today's classrooms, and ink pens have been replaced by keyboards. Today's anthropology is not the same as that of Victorian times ‐ nevertheless, as contributors to this issue make clear, the hand of authority continues to be felt in education in various, albeit less visible, ways.